Once again, apologies for the late update. We're driving huge distances pretty much every day now (as those of you following our progress with a map may have figured) and arriving in motels quite late, so this is really the first chance we've had in a few days!


Friday 24th June

Not the most exciting of days; we spent the whole day in the car getting from Ashtabula to Chicago. The only thing of any note was when our trusty sat nav decided to take us onto a closed road, a fact that slowly dawned on us as we noticed that for a highway on the outskirts of one of the largest cities in the country, no other cars and no street lights was a little bit odd, as was the stretch of road to our left that climbed up as if to be a bridge and then stopped abruptly. Luckily the road we were on was still driveable.


Saturday 25th June

We spent pretty much the whole of Saturday exploring Chicago, our first stop being the Adler Planetarium, which kept us amused for a couple of hours, our behaviour tumbling to that of four unsupervised school children. From there we walked along the waterfront aiming for downtown Chicago and in particular Millenium Park - we even checked a map before we set off to work out where we might be going. This seemed to be a great idea, apart from our disorganised minds had a small problem with the concept of scale, and we ended up walking about twice as far as we needed to, before having to double back through Chicago to eventually stumble upon the park. The main feature of the park, and certainly the thing that amused us for far longer than it should have done, is The Bean, a sculpture by a British artist which is basically a giant mirror in the shape of a more giant bean.
Our next intended stop in our grand tour was the Willis Tower, which, being the tallest building in the United States of America, we found remarkably difficult to actually track down (this could only be possible with us). Just as we were giving up hope, we headed for a skyscraper that looked fairly big and got lucky. Now, our regular readership may be aware that we have already seen the fantastic panorama from the top of the Empire State Building. The Willis Tower is several storeys higher, and we can faithfully report that it has a very nice lobby and gift shop.
Sightseeing mostly complete, we got back into the Millenium She-Dave (yes, we named the car) and a few hours later arrived in Madison, Wisconsin, and somehow landed a king-size bed. Well, Simon and Ed got a king-size bed. Tim and Guy got the sofa.

HOD: Guy for climbing the concave 8/9 ft wall on the waterfront.
DOD: For making the bathroom unsuitable for human use for quite some time.

Sunday 26th June

Another driving day, about 7 hours from Madison to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Wisonsin gave us beautiful scenery for the first hour or so, with dramatic forested hills and the vastness of the Mississippi. However, it wasn't long before we joined Interstate 90, which our guidebook warned us was one of the dullest roads in America. We can verify this claim. Have a look on Google Maps - it really is that straight, for the best part of 300 miles. Dead straight, very flat, and absolutely sod all in the way of scenery, unless crops are your thing.

DOD: Ed for blocking the toilet.

Monday 27th June
The Not-Very-Good Day

Apart from Ed banging his head in the gym, Monday got off to a good start! We deduced that Sioux Falls must have got its name somehow, and successfully found the predictably named Sioux Falls. We had a pleasant couple of hours taking pictures and scrambling over rocks, until more bad luck befell Ed as he slipped and gashed his shin on the exact same spot where he'd grazed it in Havana. With Ed plastered up, we spent another hour or so exploring and scrambling, then set off in search of lunch. Appetites sated, we headed out onto the highway. We haven't listed all of the car's faults here, but one of them is that occasionally the automatic gearbox becomes a trifle indecisive, and flits between any two gears of its choosing. Well this time, it decided it didn't like the top gear, or the gear below that, or the gear below that, or the gear below that, until eventually it decided that forward motion was considerably over-rated and stopping right here seemed quite an appealing option thank-you-very-much. Many sighs were sighed and heads were held in hands, until Ed and Tim took it upon themselves to walk back to the town we'd just left in search of suitable phone numbers of knights in shining armour.
After a brief walk, a police car approached us, and to cut a long story short, the highway patrol officer in said vehicle saved our backsides. He called a tow truck to come and get us, called up a local garage he trusted and then stayed with us making sure everything ran smoothly, even giving Ed and Tim a lift to the garage when there wasn't enough room in the tow truck (we were tempted to just upload a picture of us in a police car and say nothing but we thought that might annoy some of you). After a brief wait in the lobby of Sioux Empire Automotive, the diagnosis was delivered: an entire new transmission, and $1600 please. It wouldn't be done until the following day, so the garage very kindly gave us a lift back to our motel of the previous night. "Hooray!", we hear you cry, "it all worked out in the end after all!" Oh, dear reader, how wrong you are.
Upon arriving back at the front desk of the motel, we were told that we needed to be 21 to book a room, despite the fact that the rather dim-witted girl on the front desk had our booking from the night before on the screen in front of her, and we later found out that this law only applies to South Dakotan residents. Still, in this country rules is rules, and the man from the garage kindly gave us a lift to a less strict motel around the corner. With an evening to kill, we decided to wander into town in search of stamps so we could send a select few of you lovely people postcards (yes, we know the ones from Cuba still haven't arrived). We found a post office, and then toddled across to KFC for dinner so we could tick another fast-food chain off (we're trying to eat at every one before leaving America). While there we found some free wi-fi, so we thought we'd cheer ourselves up by using their interwebs to download Top Gear. Two hours and one failed download later, we stumbled dejectedly back to our motel room, hoping the next day would be an improvement.

DOD: Ed - cutting his leg (a repeat offence)


Tuesday 28th June

With the car fixed and our wallets lighter, we hit the road again aiming for Badlands National Park. After a few more dull hours on the infernal I90, the miles upon miles of rolling plains (not even farmland anymore) very suddenly and very dramatically gave way to the most stunning landscapes we've seen so far this trip. Words cannot do the craggy red canyons of Badlands justice, we hope our pictures convey at least some of the drama. We stayed in the park till late so as to see the sunset and then watch the stars come out in clear skies. Having watched the fireflies flit about the fields to a chorus of cicadas, we drove to a motel and charmed ourselves another discount.

HOD: Simon for spotting the signs to the trail that took us through the heart of the Badlands.
DOD: Simon for leaving the key in the car overnight.


Wednesday 29th June

This was a long but enjoyable day. In the morning we headed back to the Badlands and did another trail, taking more pictures and generally being stunned by the scenery and the wildlife. The sheer drama of the morning made the next leg of I90 bearable as we headed towards the Black Hills and Mount Rushmore. Mount Rushmore itself proved to be rather underwhelming as it first poked its four faces out from between the beautiful pine-carpeted valleys of the Black Hills; the monument itself takes up far less of the mountain than you might think. Our original intention was to briefly stop off, admire the monument from afar while taking pictures and making suitably touristy comments, then hit the road again, but having been charged $11 for parking we decided we may as well go up close, where the monument did become more impressive. From there it was another couple of hours in the car into Wyoming and the Devil's Tower, which has to be one of the most surreal rock formations we've ever seen, partly due to its sheer size and the almost completely flat land surrounding it.
While we don't deny that these all made an amazing day, they paled into comparison when we sat down for dinner in a restaurant somewhere off the highway and were greeted with the words, "Would you like some free pie?" Ecstasy doesn't begin to cover it. Appetites pampered, we ended the night in Buffalo Wyoming.

DOD: Tim for forgetting to put the filler cap back on after fuelling up.




Our swamp barbeque!



The Bean

He's doing exactly what it looks like...

Guy, mid backflip

:(

The Badlands...indescribable

What a poser

RATTLESNAKES?!

Us, mimicking the monument

The kind of roads we have to deal with

Sorry it's been a while since our last update, it's been a fairly intensive week and we've had no access to computers. Anyway, here's a week's worth and some pictures. We (Ed and Tim) got up early to do this, so be grateful. Some days don't have Hero/Douche of the Day, we can't remember them all or some days were just fairly uneventful!


Thursday 16th June: Guy's First Drive

Waking up in Williamsburg, we went to see the touristy sights there. It was only after we got in that we realised you were supposed to pay before entering. Naturally, we proceeded to see the whole site regardless, which was mildly educational and very pretty. We were very interested (and slightly alarmed) to find that the Americans in colonial dress were actually firing live ammunition from their muskets! Thankfully, this was not the case with the cannon.
We spent the rest of the day driving to Washington DC, stopping twice at prettyful view spots. At the second of these leafy pitstops, an attempt to drive off without Tim inadvertantly ended in Guy driving the rest of the way. The journey was notable for the presence of actual roads, with real corners and everything.


Friday 17th June

After optimistically enquiring at a Holiday Inn in downtown Washington, we quickly ran away from the $300 a night to cheaper realms a mere two miles from the National Mall (the bit where all the famous stuff is). We began the day by accidentally stumbling upon the National Gallery, which, it being free, we did not hesitate to explore. Upon emerging again from our brief foray into culture, we thought it might be wise to ascertain where we actually were. Having walked halfway up the (two miles long) Mall to find the information centre, we came up with an improvised tour route, which involved walking all the way back the way we'd came, then up to one end and all the way down to the other. So while our feet became weary, we did see many an attraction: The Smithsonian Air and Space Museum (happy Simon); the Capitol (impressive); the Washington Monument (very big); the Reflecting Pool (empty and muddy); the World War Two Memorial (peaceful); the Korean War Memorial (striking) and the Vietnam War Memorial (the sheer number of names is scary). The Lincoln Monument proved an unexpected highlight, as upon our approach the heavens collapsed, which made the monument a welcome shelter. However, the real treat was looking back outside to see a gloriously vivid double rainbow framing the Washington Monument and glistening off the... wait no, the Reflecting Pool was empty. Yes we're still sore about that. The final leg on our little tour was the White House, of which we were afforded a pleasant view through the fence, and we also saw Air Force 2 land and take off.
DOD: Guy for being told off by the police for jumping a fence opposite the White House (only a little one, and away from the White House, but he still got told off, so it counts).


Saturday 18th June

We almost didn't have an awesome day in Baltimore, when we got to the National Aquarium at about 1pm to find that the next entry time would be 3.15. Stubbornly we bought tickets anyway and were pleasantly surprised that our entry time was half an hour previously. Once inside, we saw creatures ranging from fish to fish, with a couple more fish thrown in for good measure. Also, a beautiful green sea turtle (even though she was a missing a flipper), some lizards, snakes, and more exciting fish such as sharks and rays. But mostly there were lots of fish. Did we mention the fish? After fulfilling our recommended daily allowance of fishy fun, we found the Australia exhibit. This prompted Tim and Guy to brush up on their Aussie accents and begin loudly discussing the presence of venomous aquatic wallabies, causing mild confusion in surrounding visitors. That pretty much filled our day, with the only other thing of note being amazingly overpriced (but delicious) milkshakes while sitting on the quay before setting our course for Philadelphia, PA.
HOD: Tim for conceiving the possibility of aquatic wallabies.
DOD: Tim for managing to leave his phone in the reception of our motel that night, and then deny it when they rang up to the room to check.


Sunday 19th June

While we had a great day, we suspect it will probably make dull reading for you folks back home. Bumbling around Philadelphia all morning was fun, and we saw the famed Liberty Bell, and the place where the Declaration of Independence was both written and first read. For the some reason the site of George Washington's residence as President has been transformed into an exhibition on slavery - interesting, if a little bewildering. Then we giggled in the car for several hours, found a motel a few miles out of New York City in Linden, New Jersey, and settled down in front of the telly for the night.
PS: Happy Birthday to Rachel Williams on this day!


Monday 20th June: New York City, Day 1

There was a train running from conveniently close to our motel to New York Penn Station in central Manhattan, so we got it. This was great apart from the fact that there are two Penn Stations on that line, the first of which is actually in Newark, a good few miles away from the Penn Station in Manhattan. Guess which one we got off at?
After our flying start to the day (but a wasted hour and $20), we attempted some actual tourism. The first thing to hit us about New York is the sheer size - the number of skyscrapers that you can barely see the top of makes the wide streets feel like tiny little alleyways. First stop on our day's amblings was the famous Times Square. Wow. Never before had we seen so many adverts in one place: every building in Times Square is literally covered in billboards and digital screens up to about 10 storeys, and the sheer onslaught of colours is quite overwhelming at first! The other predominating colour is yellow - there are very few cars on the road which aren't yellow cabs, which makes for interesting photographs but painful games of Yellow Car.
From there we continued north on 7th Avenue to Central Park - again, absolutely huge, which while pleasant proved to be our undoing. Tim expressed an interest in finding Strawberry Fields, the memorial to John Lennon. We spent about an hour, possibly more, wandering in what we assumed to be circles trying to pin down an area two acres across, and while we continually found bits of the park we hadn't yet seen, which we didn't think possible, we still had no luck. Eventually we found it (we'd gone under it twice through a tunnel), and promptly decided that pleasant though the retreat of the park was, we'd wasted enough time getting lost there and it was time to go back to the city and get lost there instead.
On our continued amblings, we found Broadway (not much to see unless you're clutching a ticket) and then moved on to the Empire State Building. From the ground, it didn't actually seem that impressive - when you're used to not being able to see the tops of buildings, not being able to see the top of one in particular doesn't really feel all that special. However, we decided the observation deck on the 84th (!) floor would be worth a look after nightfall, which gave us some time to kill. So we decided to make the most of being in a foreign country and experiencing things we don't have at home, and went to the cinema. Tickets were bloody expensive and security lax, so we decided to take matters into our own hands and kill more time by indulging in a bit of screen-hopping. On our exit we found that night had indeed happened as planned and after a spot of dinner headed back to the Empire State Building.
Extensive queues, security checks, and some more queues meant it was gone 11 by the time we reached the 84th floor, but when we did... Wow. Absolutely worth it. Words can't really do the view any justice, as lights stretched as far as the eye could see in every direction (the leaflet said on clear days the view can be up to 80 miles) and we were now looking down from a significant height on buildings that had previously stretched far above us - surreal and beautiful. Once we'd taken some pictures - and by some I mean hundreds between the four of us - we ambled back up to Times Square to see it at night (so many lights as for the difference to be negligible) and then back to Penn Station to get the 1am train and be back in bed by 1.45.
Or not. An electric fire further up the line rendered our train useless, and by the time a diesel engine turned up and eventually got us back to Linden, it was approaching 4am.
HOD: Guy for removing our rose-tinted glasses when we were presented with a ticket scam on Broadway and saving us all money.


Tuesday 21st June: New York City, Day 2

Predictably, we had a lie in after the previous evening's travel disruption, so our intention of being in New York by 11, to give us plenty of time to get the ferry and explore Ellis, Liberty and Governors' Islands, became getting into Penn Station at about 2. Instead of catching the subway we decided to walk the thirty or so blocks to Battery Park, which may not have been the best idea ever. En route we walked past Ground Zero, which is currently a building site, with a more permanent 9/11 memorial on the way as well as a new World Trade Centre (which, despite one tower being about the same height as all the surrounding buildings, was only half erected!). Upon our arrival in Battery Park, it was already too late to visit Governors' Island, so we bought the ticket for Ellis Island and hopped aboard. Although we didn't actually get off at Liberty Island, the boat still docked there and we got a really good close up view of the Statue of Liberty. Ellis Island has been transformed into a museum about its own history and that of US immigrants, which was interesting, and passed the afternoon agreeably enough. With our feet back on dry land we headed over to the Brooklyn Bridge and walked a third of the way along it, which afforded a nice view, and then we got the subway back to Penn Station, being far too lazy to repeat the long walk of earlier in the day.
By about 9pm we were back on the road taking a chunk out of the journey to Niagara Falls. We passed through the Appalachian Trail en route, which was probably absolutely gorgeous, but it was dark, so we'll never know. Finally found a motel somewhere in New York State having done about four hours' driving, leaving three for the following day.


Wednesday 22nd June

Having set off early (before 11!) we arrived at Niagara Falls, New York, and decided that the view would probably be better from Niagara Falls, Ontario, so we breezed through immigration into Canada. This decision had nothing to do with the drinking ages being 19, officer.
To experience Niagara Falls fully, we obviously had to take a little trip on the Maid Of The Mist. What followed was pretty much indescribable: very noisy, absolutely amazing, and quite wet, which surprised us. The falls are breathtakingly beautiful, and we quite happily spent our remaining daylight hours looking at them. Then, come nightfall, huge coloured spotlights illuminate the falls and make them beautiful all over again.
While on Canadian soil, it  would have been rude not to take advantage of their more liberal drinking age, and we found ourselves a pleasant beer garden, called The Beer Garden, in which to do so. Pitchers of beer were purchased (and glasses of whatever girly things Simon drinks) and were subsequently quaffed, and suddenly the karaoke stage appeared to be an arrestingly attractive proposition. Tim, being Tim, had a couple of goes, and then following a few more cups of Brave Juice, Ed, Simon and Guy followed suit, and a jolly good time was had by all.
HOD: Tim, for getting tipped while singing Superstition, which went nicely towards another round.
DOD: Guy, for breaking our prized coolbox (RIP) and drenching Ed in the process, amongst other things.
PS Happy Birthday to Di Smith on this day!


Thursday 23rd June

Our plan for the day was to return to the USA and see Niagara from their side, as we'd noticed while on the other side of the water that there was a walk going to the foot of the falls. Unfortunately, plans don't always work out, as they don't always take US Customs and Border Control into consideration.
After sitting in a traffic queue for about half an hour, we finally reached the booth, and were asked to kindly leave the vehicle, and please take our hands out of our pockets. To cut a long story short, it turned out that four UK citizens entering the USA from Canada in a car on Florida plates isn't the most common of occurrences, and once we'd convinced the (armed!) customs officials that we weren't dangerous, we realised we were just thoroughly confusing them. This is when it finally hit home how absolutely, ridiculously, absurdly silly our trip is. Never before had the guys in customs (who eventually became quite friendly and chatty) heard of people turning up on holiday, buying a car and then driving away on a wing and a prayer.
Once our car had been returned to us, having been searched (and no, they still haven't found the Cuban cigars), we parked up at stateside Niagara Falls, and made our way down to the path at the foot of the falls. We applied our usual forethought to the situation and toddled down in regular shoes. You know, the fabric kind with socks underneath. Turns out these waterfall things are fairly wet; we're still wearing sandals while our shoes dry out.
With shoes and socks airing in the boot, we set off for our overnight stop in Ashtabula. Yes, we are just finding funny place names on the map, and it is real. Which brings us to 9.14 am on Friday 24th June. We've been here for two hours writing, and now we want breakfast. If you're good, we might update in another week. Ed says possibly every day, but I think we all know that won't happen.
HOD: Ed for finding a much-needed laundromat.
DOD: Unfortunately, we're not awarding more than one douche per day, but if we were, I think a group effort for going to the foot of a waterfall in proper shoes has to be taken into consideration.

Nawwwwww

DOUBLE RAINBOWWWW!!!!!

He's doing exactly what you think he's doing....Neeeowwwwwwwmmmm

Brooklyn Bridge

Word.

BOMB

Ed+Guy bottom right. Getting considerably moist.

We've been wetter.....

View from the boat...before we got a bit soggy

Standard Simon

Standard Simon #2

Master

Apprentices

We are so childish

This post dedicated in loving memory of Timothy John Smith